I proudly wore my calculator watch for maybe a year before breaking the band after catching the giant display on something :-) That was the last time a watch graced my arm in a permanent fashion. Ahh the memories.

So, this app will make sure such a fashion disaster doesn't have to happen again. Thanks to the calculator app, I can still perform those geeky tasks of calculating out gas mileage, perfect tipping, supermarket costs, etc without the paying the ultimate fashion price.

Ahh, Monday morning! It's time to look at the news headlines and check the stock market. As usual, your ubuntu phone has you covered for this part of your morning routine! Enter stock ticker!

As one of the newest core apps, Stock Ticker has done it's part in catching up quickly. The interface already sports working charting, news and detail views for stock symbols of your choosing via the management page.

So you've seen the building excitement and noise around the core apps project and are wishing there was a way for you to help. Perhaps your not a developer or someone with the skills to help write auomated tests. Or maybe you just want a preview of what things are like and play around with the developing ubuntu touch platform.

To be fair, running and playing with the core apps is a lot more fun than eating actual dogfood, and it might even be healthier for you too :-p

Enter the core apps ppa. Just a quick command away and you can get access to all of the core apps. Ready?

EDIT: You also need the qt5 and ubuntu-sdk team ppa in order for the dependencies to work. Sorry!sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-qt5-edgers/qt5-propersudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-sdk-team/ppasudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ubuntu-sdk

This will install the ppa and all of the core apps. They should run just fine on your desktop.

So now what? Well, even without a phone you can dogfood the apps a little. Try them out. Use them. Find bugs and problems. See if they meet your needs (real or percieved) for usage. Everyone's needs and usage will be different, and thus this early feedback is important to get into the hands of the developers.

Find a bug? See a potential missing feature? Check out the dogfooding page for bug reporting links and instructions as well as blueprints showing work items and status for features. Happy Testing err, Dogfooding!
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Or I suppose I could swipe my gorgeous ubuntu phone and see my weather with lovely icons. I may just decide to stay inside and watch my virtual sun bask it's artificial light upon my skin for hours. I'm only (half) kidding.

Still it's not hard to admit the weather app is shaping up to be one of the sharpest looking applications for ubuntu touch. Martin Borho has already gotten through many of the bugs listed so there is an excellent structure in place for you to add some further tests.

I'm including some of the questions below as a bit of an FAQ for those starting the journey. Read the workshop introduction and the FAQ below and go automate all the things! I'll see you at the next workshop.

What do I need to develop tests?A raring or saucy installation (VM or real) and the autopilot and ubuntu-sdk packages installed. You will also need an understanding of how autopilot works (or be willing to learn :-) )

How do I run/install a core app?Once you've branched your core app source code, you don't need to install it in order to run it. However there is a ppa with all the core apps you can install. To run the core app from source, run it like so in the root directory:qmlscene APPNAME.qml, ie qmlscene dropping-letters.qmlIn order to install from the ppa, follow the info here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/CoreApps/PPAYou can install all the core apps run them as you would any other application. After installing from the ppa, simply run the application name, ie "dropping-letters"

Can we write tests for qml apps using autopilot using precise or quantal?No, the ubuntu-sdk and the new version of autopilot we're utilizing both require raring and preferably saucy to work.

Where can I see an example of autopilot tests?The tutorial on developer.ubuntu.com is an excellent first step for seeing an autopilot test in action and seeing an explanation of the test and how it works. In addition, the file manager, clock, weather, calendar and weather core apps already have some autopilot tests written as of this writing.

How much python does one need to know in order to write autopilot tests?Not as much as you think :-) If you are familiar with programming and can understand and use the basic autopilot functions and the ubuntu sdk emulator, writing a test won't require you to learn any fancy python.

When your like me and work with wonderful people across the world, knowing what time it is turns out to be really important. It's important to know what time it is in my timezone and the timezone of others I work with around the world.

Even sticking with my own timezone, I use my my clock to wake me each morning, keep track of my running, and let me time things while cooking (proper eggs anyone?) :-) Nekhelesh Ramananthan and the other clock developers are tackling all of these problems with the clock app. Sadly unlike sudoku, I haven't found a way how to cheat time.

Tick tock goes the clock

With that in mind, it's important the clock app gets it's fair share of testing! Nekhelesh has added some tests from the buglist, but some of the tests require further feature development. Since we can't stop time (well at least I can't!), it would be a great help to have someone come alongside these developers and add some testcases so they can focus on the application itself.

Recently we've been on a campaign to help increase the amount of automated tests we have for ubuntu. Specifically the effort is focused around helping out our community developers on the core apps project. The core apps project is building the core applications for ubuntu touch. Excellent stuff, all being done by the community!

The "testing all the things" blog series is currently covering each of these core applications and ends with a call to help the development teams. I've linked to tutorials like this and this on autopilot providing what you need to know. But sometimes seeing is understanding, and a helping hand can go a long way.

With that in mind, I am announcing a series of workshops to help you gather the skills needed to write automated tests. You can help contribute with just your ubuntu pc, writing and running tests without needing phone hardware! We're going to focus on autopilot, and for the moment the ubuntu core apps. I'll try and alternate to host them at timezone friendly times for everyone (granted I do have to sleep at some point too!). Here's the schedule, with links to the event on G+ page.

The workshops will take place in #ubuntu-quality and will all last an hour (but I won't leave you hanging if we need more time!). I'll host g+ hangouts and provide one on one help as needed to anyone writing tests. See you at the workshops!

In honor of the closing of google reader, I thought I would highlight another core application that needs some attention; namely the RSS Reader, with a proper name Shorts. If your already bored and yawning (RSS is dead, long live RSS), have a look at the design's recently shared by the design team as well as the original post with the user stories. Seems like RSS might not be so dead (or look it!)!

Yes, I still use RSS feeds, mainly as a news aggregator. In many ways honestly RSS feeds have long replaced my idea of bookmarking things. Bookmarks are general stale old content that never updates, is never refreshed and is eventually just purged. The ideas shown in the design of Shorts are great and the development team has a wonderful task ahead of them of implementing them.

With the development team focused on getting the code written, it's our opportunity to help out by adding testcases for there work. For instance, simple things like adding, editing, and removing a rss feed all need tested. The testcases are ready and waiting for you to add a test!

Coming off a lovely weekend, it's time we turned our attention to an app on the lighter side. Anyone up for a game of sudoku?

Sudoku is an example of a simple logic game that can be learned easily enough yet has the staying power to intrigue me to continue to play it. Dinko Osmankovic and the rest of the Sudoku Touch developers have created a version for ubuntu touch to fill those critical mundane moments of the day -- waiting for a train or having your morning coffee. Or perhaps if your like me, fighting insomnia (yikes!).

Apparently using the show hints button to play the entire game makes me a cheat.

So, while it seems the game is smart enough to slap me for trying to cheat my way through, it needs some testcases! Looking at the buglist, there are seven tasty bugs with your potential name on them. This is testing at it's finest! It's rare to count playing a game as helping ubuntu -- but in this case, you would be right!

With the announcement of MIR being the default display server for 13.10, many folks rightly wonder if it will be stable and ready to ship by then. Well, as part of ensuring that will be the case, I'd like to announce that XMir will become part of the bi-weekly cadence testing we as a community team undertake. Week 2 begins this Saturday and will include XMir testing.

The testcases we'll be using at the moment are basic smoke tests to check the overall state of XMir. As the cycle wears on our goal is to perform a full regression test for XMir against the normal Xorg server to make sure everything is super smooth. The goal is for someone running ubuntu saucy to not even realize something has changed with the display server. So ready to help?

A good calendar is essential to me. I'm liable to forget almost everything about my day except eating :-) Things like day of the week and month are important details I definitely rely on a calendar for (I can usually get the month right!).

Fortunately for me (and you!), there is a core app that provides a handy Calendar. Michael Hall featured this application a few weeks ago on his blog covering a development rundown of the application. It covers the list of features nicely. In a word, there's a lot of neat stuff to test in there.

Looking at the buglist of needs there are only 2 showing in-progress -- plenty of room for someone to help out by testing each one of the different views. Monthly, daily, weekly; accessed via swiping.

" Swiping left and right on the month will take you back or forward a month at a time. Swiping left or right on the bottom half will take you back and forward a day at a time.

Pull the event area down and let it go, and the month will collapse down into a single week. Now swiping left and right there will move you back and forward a week at a time. Pull down and let it go again and it will snap back to showing the full month.

Finally, you have an option in the toolbar (swipe up from the bottom edge) to switch from an event list to a timeline view of your events."

Are you dizzy yet?

These seamless transitions could use some cool testcases! At the moment, the app is seeing it's first merge requests being made by Carla Sella and Kunal Parmar. The team has faced some issues with uncovering some unique requirements for autopilot, which have now been fixed. Excellent work both of you!

I couldn't help but start with one of the core apps I consider essential (to me anyway!) on my phone, a terminal. The terminal app being developed for ubuntu has some wonderful features built with a touch interface in mind. One of the biggest issues with touch is having a terminal ready keyboard with things like page up and down, arrow keys, and not to mention being able to use keyboard shortcuts like ctrl+d, ctrl+z, ctrl+c, etc. This has been handled rather elegantly with a long tap menu as you can see below, in addition to a panel that optionally appears at the top of the application.

Dmitry Zagnoyko has already landed a few tests for some of the features present, as you can see below. Execellent work Dmitry! A basic testcase exists now for each of the panels and the circle menu.

As a quality community team, we've been continuing to make progress this cycle on automating our testcases, especially the new applications that are being written for ubuntu touch. These 'core apps' are being written by other community members for the next generation of ubuntu.

We're also making progress on our desktop applications and automating the ubiquity installer. With that in mind, I'm going to start a little blog series highlighting a package a day for automating. I'll dub it rather unoriginally "Testing All The Things". My goal is to showcase the wonderful work going on with testing this cycle in ubuntu, but also to encourage you dear reader to get involved in helping us. All areas of ubuntu (flavors too!) can benefit from some robot friends helping test the packages they work on and utilize.

But you don't need to wait to see your favorite app hit the list. Hit up the tutorials below for information to dive in and help us!

Given all recent love and excitement for autopilot I wanted to share the QA community's progress on writing autopilot tests for, celebrate our successes and let everyone know where we still need help.

First let's talk about the ubuntu-autopilot-tests project. As part of the hackfests held at the end of May/early June we were able to complete the transition to autopilot 1.3 of the ubuntu desktop autopilot tests. Thanks to all of the contributors and hackers for helping on this! In addition, we now have a production branch, and the canonical platform QA team is working on adding them to the official smoke testing each day, Great work everyone! That said, tests are still needed, and in some cases the testcases are still basic and not covering many of the application features. There is still room for you to be invovled! Of note is the on-going work to automated our image testing via the UI.

Next, let's talk about the core apps. Last Thursday we held a hackfest to help kickstart testcases for all of these projects. So let's take a look at how far we've come in a week. As a reminder, testcase contributions to any of the core apps is very much appreciated -- there is still a need for you to come alongside and help write tests!

CalculatorThere are already several testcases merged in with the main branch, but as one of the most feature complete applications, work and help is still needed in this area. There are currently 6 open bugs for tests needed here. This is a great application to contribute to for someone new to autopilot!

TerminalThe first merge request has just been approved and landed for terminal autopilot tests. But there's more features to be tested in this awesome app. Grab something off the list and go. The setup work is already done.

MusicReady and waiting! Check out the list of bugs and have at it! The basic structure is already in place. Simply grab a copy of the emulator, pick a bug and write your test. This app needs you!

WeatherHalf of the initial testcases have been started and the first merges are being proposed. Rock on Martin!

A couple weeks ago we announced the initiative to drive up our autopilot (that is, automated) tests for our ubuntu touch core apps. The core apps are being made with the ubuntu sdk, and thus share the same language (QML) and toolkit (ubuntusdk).

With this in mind I wanted to provide an emulator, which in autopilot speak, is a utility class for writing autopilot tests that use the ubuntu SDK. The goal is to help accelerate the process for getting the testcases written, as well as standardizing best practices for testing common features. At the moment the emulator contains useful functions like tab switching, selecting from popovers, opening and closing the toolbar and clicking toolbar buttons. Please, take a look and utilize the emulator when you are contributing new tests for the ubuntu touch applications. For the moment, the emulator can be found here:

The future home is hopefully in the SDK itself, but for now consider that branch your source for emulator goodness. Now, a quick FAQ.

Is it ready for use?Yes, it's ready and tested on several core apps now including clock, calendar, terminal, and file manager. That said if you find an issue, simply contact me or propose an improvement!

How do I use it?Inside your autopilot test subfolder, add an emulators folder if it's not already present. Next, branch my source above -- it will add ubuntusdk.py to the folder. Simply incorporate it into your __init__.py or testcase itself and call the utility functions with ubuntusdk.*. For an example check out the ubuntu-terminal-app and the merge request from today. It shows adding autopilot tests to an empty branch. In addition, the emulator (albeit an earlier version) was used in the tutorial on the ubuntu app developer portal.

Will it be updated?Yes! Expect refinements and tweaks as we go along. Hopefully a true "stable and complete" version will appear in the not too distant feature when the emulator itself has a proper home. In the meantime, use it and as more complex tests are added, expect to update the emulator in the source branch you are working in.

Hot on the heels of our first cadence week, I wanted to take the opportunity to collect feedback about the tools we as a community utilize. Specifically the QATracker which we heavily rely on for managing our work, testcases and results. From the wiki, "The QATracker is the master repository for all our our testing within ubuntu QA. It holds our testcases, records our results, and helps coordinate our testing events."

This is a link to a brief survey asking a few simple questions about how you've used the tool. All your responses are anonymous, but I will publish the aggregate question information and share it with the community once completed. The goal is to help ensure the tool is meeting our needs and is being utilized.

I'll leave the survey up until June 24th. My hope is to encourage more folks to help test as well as make it more enjoyable for those already taking part. I want to ensure our tools and processes continue to evolve, strengthen and become more robust for everyone as we continue on our mission. Part of that is making sure the tools we use are enjoyable!

Thanks in advance everyone!

As a bonus, Pasi, aka knome, has put together some mockups on how we might be able to switch what the results page looks like. This is perhaps the most utilized page of the site, so without further ado, here's a mockup of some changes proposed to make it more usable:

What a change eh? The add test results has been moved to the sidebar and simplified, the bugs listing has been written out, and the results have been moved to the top. Finally the links have also been moved to the sidebar and Pasi has updated the icons ;-)

SO, what does everyone think about the changes? Many thanks to Pasi for putting this together! Leave a comment, a message on the mailing list, or reflect your thoughts in the survey.

Do note that you don't need anything special to participate in cadence week testing! Both an installed version of the development branch of ubuntu (aka saucy) in a VM or on a real box, or even a live session of the latest daily image will work. For more information on how to use a live session to test, check out the Cadence Week testing walkthrough or watch the youtube video of the same.

Autopilot Says: How can I help?Now it's time to add some more testing around these applications as they have reached a basic functional level of usability. Automated testing via autopilot to the rescue!

To help kickstart this process we've put together a recipe for writing autopilot tests specific to QML applications and added it to developer.ubuntu.com. In addition, we'll be hosting a hackfest next week on June 13th to help add basic autopilot testcases for each of the core apps. Folks will be on-hand ready to field your questions and hack together on the autopilot testcases needed for the applications. Join us and help support the wonderful community of application developers making awesome applications for ubuntu!

Consider this text your giant disclaimer. Just a reminder these images are not intended for end-users; please don't go flashing your device thinking you'll have a replacement for android. These images are intended for developers, enthusiasts and testers who want to help. If this describes you, please read on!

I'm happy to announce the ubuntu touch images are now available for testing on the isotracker. And further, the images are now raring based! As such, the ubuntu touch team is asking for folks to try out the new images on there devices and ensure they are no regressions or other issues.

There are 4 product listings representing each of the officially supported devices; grouper (nexus 7), maguro (galaxy nexus), mako (nexus 4), and manta (nexus 10). You can help by installing the new images following the installation instructions, and then reporting your results on the isotracker. If your device has never run a developer preview image for ubuntu touch, you might need to read and follow the steps on the touch wiki first.

Once all the kinks and potential issues are worked out (your feedback requested!) the raring based images will become the default, and moving forward, the team will continue to provide daily images and participate in testing milestones as part of the 's' cycle.

As always please contact me if you run into issues, or have a question. Thank you in advance for your help, and happy testing everyone!Read more

I wanted to post briefly about the work that has been going on at the end of the cycle in the ubuntu quality team. Yes, we're testing the final images! Yes, it's been a wild ride that is nearing the finish! Yes, you can help contribute results! (And as we'll see below, you can help write tools too!)

But more than all of that, several team members have stepped out of there comfort zones and went to work on one of the testing tools we as a team utilize. The tool is called "Testdrive" and is written in python. Now, one of the great things I love to espouse on about with QA is the opportunity to work on many different things. There are needs to fit all interests, and if you are willing, the capability to learn.

In this instance, there is an opportunity to learn a little python and to work with a new team to help keep a testing tool alive. I'm happy to see that the same tool that was rendered broken in January by updates is now alive and well, with brand new contributors, fresh patches and even a release! Many thanks to smartboyhw, noskcaj, SergioMeneses, phillw, and the others who have reached out to ensure the tool that ships in raring still works. Thanks as well to the testdrive development team for engaging with us, reviewing merge proposals, and helping to ensure testdrive still works.

I look forward to a bright feature of new and improved testing tools. Specifically to those who contributed patches, with your new coding abilities, I can't wait to see what will happen next cycle! *wink, wink*